Heavy Heart

Hey yall! Sorry I have been MIA lately...guess I just needed a little bloggy break.

As I was catching up on my blog stalking tonight, I realized I was reading posts from 2 DAYS AGO!!! Not sure about you guys, but I stress out if something is over a few hours old! This is probably the first sign of addiction....

Anyways, I am writing to you with a very heavy heart tonight. My teamie and BFF lost her mother today. She had been fighting the battle with cancer for about a year and a half now, and the cancer finally won.

I am filled with such sadness for my friend. I cannot even imagine the pain of losing your mother, especially at such a young age. Even though I never had the pleasure of meeting her mother, I know that she was an amazing woman and will be greatly missed. My heart is breaking for my sweet friend, and I hope that she can find some peace during this trying time.

I wanted to fill you guys in on the fun St. Patty's Day stuff we've got going on, but I think I will save that for one big post tomorrow night. We have a couple more things going on, and I want to wow you guys with it all at once...ha!

So, instead I will share some things we are doing in science right now. We kicked off our organisms unit with a trip to the Georgia Aquarium. Click here to see some pictures from our trip.

Yesterday, my littles illustrated a picture of a living thing, and then we compiled a list of living things.



Please don't judge my anchor charts. I do not have the patience, nor the talent, to make amazing charts like Abby.

Notice that some things such as leprechauns and Santa made it on our list. I couldn't very well tell them those things don't exist, now can I? So, like any good elementary teacher, I just added them to our list with a smile :)

Today, we discussed how to be good scientists by using our senses to make observations. First, we made this anchor chart on questions to ask when making observations.



Again, stop judging :)

Then I passed out four different types of seeds to my littles: pea seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and kidney bean seeds. They glued these onto their papers, and then used their senses to describe them. They even got to use some little hand lenses, which they thought was amazing!



I really like this unit, because the littles get to experience some creepy crawlies first hand. But I am not looking forward to storing 4 aquariums and 4 terrariums in my already too-small room. I am also keeping my fingers crossed that we will get a better batch of guppies this year. Last year, they died daily and I had to rush to scoop them out before anyone noticed.

I need to say thank you for those that nominated my little old blog for an award. Angela at The Daily Alphabet, Mary Beth from Run Teacher, Run, and Jada from Daisy Days for Learning all nominated me for a Top Ten Blogger award! Wow! Thanks ladies!

Before I say goodnight, I was wanting to put out another call out for guest bloggers. I have had a few interested (thanks!!!), but would really like a couple more for when I will be enjoying the beaches of Japan :) So, please shoot me an email if you are interested.

nlemacks@gmail.com